Fish Restoration Benefits Everyone!

We work with our state partners and others to restore native species such as landlocked Atlantic salmon and American eel, which are ecologically, culturally and economically important to the region. We also are restoring eastern brook trout to the Lake Champlain, Connecticut River and Hudson River watersheds. We remove obstacles to fish movement and migration, restore habitat, control invasive species and boost dwindling populations with hatchery-reared fish. Restoring the above species are our priorities, however, all migratory and resident aquatic species benefit from our efforts.

Landlocked Atlantic salmon is one such species that has benefited from our efforts. Young salmon migrate out of our rivers into Lake Champlain when they are between 1 and 3 years; there they mature into an adult. Then, adults return in the fall to the rivers where they were born or stocked, to spawn a new generation of salmon. By the early 1900's, dams, pollution, habitat degradation and overfishing had eliminated native salmon from Lake Champlain. We are removing barriers to their migration and providing passage over others to allow adult salmon access to critical spawning and nursery areas in the watershed, which is necessary for new generations to thrive. We also assist the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation with rearing and stocking landlocked Atlantic salmon into Adirondack tributaries including the Boquet, Ausable, and Saranac River watersheds. As well, we stock fall salmon fingerlings into the Huntington River - a tributary to the Winooski River in Vermont. In 2016, our office and the Concordia University documented the first evidence of natural reproduction in the Winooski River in the last 100 years!

Lake trout, like Atlantic salmon, also were eliminated from Lake Champlain in the 1800s. Today, lake trout are sustained through hatchery-rearing and stocking programs in Vermont and New York. Our goal is to maintain a robust fishery and reestablish natural populations.

American eel support important commercial fisheries where populations remain at harvestable levels. Downward trends in harvest data, however, raised concern for the eel in the United States and Canada. The Richelieu River, which connects Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence River, formerly supported a commercial eel fishery, but the fishery was closed in 1998 because eels had declined dramatically. We are working with the province of Québec on restoring American eel in the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain. With the construction of fish passage facilities on the river and stocking almost 2 million young eels, the eels now migrate into Lake Champlain where they stay between 8 to 20 years before leaving the lake to return to the ocean to spawn. While we have observed some increase in the number of eels in Lake Champlain, natural recruitment (more young eels) is still not enough to rebuild the eel stock in Lake Champlain (American eel sampling in Lake Champlain, 2016 progress report).

Our office is working with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife to assess the health of northern Vermont’s wild brook trout populations. We are surveying areas that were surveyed back in 1960, and comparing our results. We sampled thirty-three locations, from 20 different streams in the upper Missisquoi River watershed. And our preliminary analysis shows brook trout populations are doing well, with numbers similar or better than those of the original surveys.